ALIENS at The Shadowbox Theatre in New Orleans for a Three-week Run

Amigos and virtual community (distribute with cyber abandon):

ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS made its national debut at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans last weekend with four well-received performances, and we have moved the show to the Shadowbox Theatre at 2400 Saint Claude Avenue (corner of St. Roch) in the Marigny neighborhood. The Shadowbox is the latest arts jewel to line the developing Saint Claude Avenue arts corridor.

ALIENS Performances @ The Shadowbox Theatre
September 23-26, Sept. 30 - Oct. 3 & Oct. 7-10, 2010
All shows @ 8PM - $10 at the door & 2 for $15

Follow the link below for tickets and more information:
http://www.theshadowboxtheatre.com/Shadowbox/Blank_2.html

ALIENS is the interdisciplinary performance I have been developing since March of 2010, and the script is informed by interviews I have conducted of Latino immigrants in Houston, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, the cites of the three commissioning theaters for the project.

ABOUT ALIENS: Through this Sci-fi Latino noir multimedia solo, I satirize the status of immigrants as "aliens" and explore the rise in hate crimes against Latinos across the U.S. ALIENS dares to asks the hard question about the immigration debate, “Since the Pilgrims arrived without papers and were the first illegals, why were they not deported?” Cultivating a hybrid sci-fi visceral stage look, I shape-shift into numerous Latino “extraterrestrials” who bilingually challenge the flaws of a country built by immigrants that vilifies the same people whose labor it exploits, ay caramba!

Go to the link below for more information on ALIENS:
http://www.torrestama.com/site/aliens.html

The key collaborators in ALIENS include the amazing John Grimsley of Dog & Pony Theatre Company, who has added his visual theatrical genius to a creative lighting design that brings out the sci-fi aesthetics. The spacey satirical film shorts are created by Bruce France of Mondo Bizarro (a.k.a. El Video Vato). Billy Atwell (a.k.a El Audio Dali Vato), a key collaborator from New York, has created an engaging original sci-fi music score that accompanies some vignettes. The classical recordings of opera vocalist Claudia Copeland will also be featured in the production.

ALIENS is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by MECA (Houston) in partnership with GALA Hispanic Theatre (D.C.), and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center. ALIENS has also been supported through a Community Arts Partnership grant award from Alternate ROOTS.
http://alternateroots.org

Make art that matters,
José Torres-Tama
ArteFuturo Productions
2426 Saint Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70117
www.torrestama.com
504.232.2968

NEW ORLEANS FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR
OGDEN MUSEUM ART BOOK available at
http://www.torrestama.com/ogdenbook/index.html

Capturing Los Invisibles & Bringing Them Out of the Shadows: Curator’s Notes

Generally, the photographers in our communities are the ones that see what most of us miss, and the good ones capture the unseen with acute vision and sublime compositions, transforming our normality into an artful reality. At the beginning of this project when we put out the initial call to photographers in late June, Andy Antippas and I were struck by how few submissions were in as the July 30th deadline approached. We extended our call to early August and continued our outreach to photographers local and national.

In numerous conversations with well-known photographer friends about this project, most confessed that it had not dawn upon them to document the thousands of Latino immigrants that were all around us rebuilding house after devastated house since the storm. A few did express intentions to photograph this historical convergence of Spanish speaking laborers here, but somehow never did. The lack of entries became a testament to the conclusions I have formed for the past five years; that the Latino immigrant laborers rebuilding New Orleans have been ubiquitous and invisible at the same time. If the photographers, who are the ones with cameras as their natural appendages to frame the less noticeable, had not managed to focus their trained eyes on the immigrant workers, how was the common man and woman expected to render them visible? They truly had become the invisible, and we were wondering if there would be a photo exhibition at all.

In Spanish, los invisibles is the term often used for those who have disappeared or are missing because of political intolerance under the many past dictatorships in our Latin American countries. It is a complicated term, but it aptly applies to the conditions of undocumented Latino immigrants in a United States gripped by hysterical fears that the alien other is taking over. While they have not been disappeared, they are without a doubt a shadow people. Their vulnerable status has transformed them into a transparent people that are not recognized as fully human. It makes their suffering an obscure painful story easy to ignore because foreigners are classified as “aliens” in the country, extraterrestrials from the Planet Other with a marginalized existence.

We are grateful for the photographers in this exhibition whose third eye did see los invisibles and have submitted documentary photos, immigrant portraits, and images of day laborers at various pick-up points across the city. Aoife Naughton and Wes Wallace, now living in Dublin, Ireland, submitted their work across international waters. Their 2006-07 series documents immigrants at two major pick-up points, Lee Circle and the Claiborne Avenue and MLK Blvd. intersection. The photo titled “Lee Circle I” is probably the most haunting depiction of huddled laborers waiting to be chosen. The gray-greenish black and white tint of the image transforms it into a science fiction still that evokes an apocalyptic holding station for day laborers.

“Claiborne Avenue III” is a portrait of a defiant worker for hire who could easily pass for a Pancho Villa look alike, if Pancho had risen from the dead to put up Sheetrock. With folded arms, he is distinguished by a striking mustache and a disheveled Everyman’s attire of someone familiar with hard work. In “Claiborne Avenue V”, two workers are standing against a large painted wall of the Big Easy Deli. The two figures are ironically cornered before the painted wall ad that declares, “Open 24 Hours”, as if to suggest that immigrants are for hire for all hours of the day. It is one of the most striking images in the show. Collectively, the ten photos Naughton and Wallace have contributed reprise a comprehensive study of immigrants at these two major labor pick-up points. They have captured poignant portraits that magnify the workers' humanity, vulnerability, and manly cojones needed to stand on a street corner in search of work. This act itself is one that we should honor because only the brave and needy engage in such a dangerous activity.

Abdul Aziz focuses his photojournalistic lens on a recent 2010 May Day demonstration. His “Strongest Little Voice” depicts a proud fist-to-the air immigrant girl leading a congregation of marchers that carry a horizontal banner in protest of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 legislation. Almost mythically, she appears to be a modern-day Mestiza brown Joan of Arc, leading her people to battle with her own banner whose only visible words STOP are enough to imply a halt to the criminalization of immigrants.

In “The Carousel for Democracy”, Craig Morse catches two Honduran young men in a moment of relaxation, perhaps in between jobs, atop plastic carousel horses. The image echoes a Diane Arbus surreality that is both comical and oddly disturbing. Wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, the young man in the foreground is straddling the petite plastic horse in an almost awkward man-child pose with a cheesy replica of the Statue of Liberty in the background. This juxtaposition gives the photo a political resonance that maybe the promise of prosperity in the land of opportunity is not as real as imagined.

Meryt Harding’s “Believe” is a half body portrait of a worker with an Obama campaign Tee-shirt, where the candidate in a messianic posture seems to be recruiting more believers like an Uncle Sam with a sun tan. What is often loss in the Obama rise to the White House story is that Barak exemplifies the greatest dream an immigrant here can have: That their U.S. born offspring can ascend to such a powerful position. Obama is the Hawaiian-born son of an African immigrant, and there is a tenderness and hopefulness in the face of this Latino man sporting this shirt. Maybe Obama can deliver the positive immigration reform that many Latinos who voted for him are waiting for.

Mario Tama’s “Migrant Day Laborers Help New Orleans Rebuild Series #1” manages to frame a lesser know aspect of the immigrant plight, as many trek thousands of miles from their countries of origin and leave families behind to work on this side of the border. His image focuses on a worn color photograph of a five-month old baby boy being shown to the viewer by a young father whose sculptural caramel-colored face recedes in the background. It is a photo within a photo, and we learn that it is the son the immigrant laborer has not seen because he made the journey to New Orleans before his baby’s birth. There are hundreds of stories like this among the many immigrants who have labored hard to rebuild the Big Easy over the past five years. It is my hope that this exhibition can humanize a people that have been rendered invisible.
--- José Torres-Tama

LOS INVISIBLES: Latino Immigrants in the Post-Katrina Reconstruction of New Orleans

Year five of the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans is upon us, and the dirtiest little secret of the recovery is that our rapid progress owes a tremendous debt to the Latino immigrants who have labored hard to rebuild the Big Easy. While the BP oil spill disaster is our latest reminder that we are a new millennium epicenter for man made and natural tragedies, the many setbacks that this recovering mini-metropolis has experienced include a nationally high murder rate and a corrupt police department under federal investigation.

Nonetheless, the city and its resilient people continue forward, and most people I speak to recognize that the Latino work force has been vital in transforming New Orleans into a livable city and a functioning tourist destination, still open for business even with the toxic oil that looms in our Mississippi waterways and the Gulf. However, the story of Latino immigrants and the reconstruction remains conspicuously absent when the post-storm narratives are accounted in the local and national press.

It’s as if the immigrants are living in a parallel universe as invisible inhabitants, laboring in the shadows of a science fiction reality. For years, los invisibles have been physically visible everywhere on rooftops and numerous construction sites, but they are ubiquitous and nowhere at the same time. The undocumented status of many has transformed them into a transparent people that are not recognized as fully human. This condition makes their suffering an obscure painful story that most prefer to ignore because foreigners are classified as aliens in this country, extraterrestrials from the Planet Other with a marginalized existence.

I recently interviewed three young day laborers, and each man shared stories of being cheated by ruthless contractors and local businesses. One worker with a wife and three children had put in two weeks at a major hotel in the French Quarter, but when the promised payday arrived, he and the dozen men in his maintenance crew were told to leave the premises by the gringo manager who threatened to call immigration authorities. He was left with no money to pay for his rent or buy food for his family. Crushed and defeated, he turned to Catholic Charities for some food support.

The second gentleman was a victim of wage theft a number of times, and with tears swelling his eyes, he spoke of great despair and loss of dignity as a man when he could not provide for his family. Even more crushing was that a contractor of Latino descent had robbed him as well, mocking the work crew that they should be paid in rice and beans. Abuse of power over the most vulnerable workers should come as no surprise, and while the three men reported that most contractors who had cheated them were Caucasian, legal Latinos have joined the exploitation party. Also, many immigrants here have been crime victims of young black men who know that workers carry cash on them. The word on the street is that immigrants are human ATM machines to violate and withdraw cash from, dehumanizing them further.

The youngest of the group was nineteen when he arrived two weeks after Katrina hit. He worked twelve-hour days while sleeping fourteen to a trailer meant to house one person. Nine months later, a huge metal dumpster fell on his left hand. The white contractor who hired him refused to call an ambulance. Fortunately, his working partner had a cell phone, but by the time he arrived at the hospital, half his hand was practically sliced off. While most doctors recommended severing his entire arm to protect from a major infection, the lone African American surgeon, who had a son the same age, intervened and performed five miraculous surgeries to reattach his hand. During his convalescence, this injured worker had a major epiphany that led him to become an activist.

Living in a shadow society, most immigrants are left to silently absorb many social blows because of their station, but all three of these men have joined the Congress of Day Laborers to fight for the rights of immigrant workers who have contributed their blood and sweat to rebuilding a city that has turned a blind eye to their struggles. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that 80% of the immigrant labor force that reconstructed New Orleans was basically robbed of their rightful wages. The insidious tactic of employers calling immigration instead of paying rightfully earned salaries is commonplace in the slave labor fiesta still taking place here. Fears of deportation have kept thousands mute, but these men have undergoing a mythic transformation from silent martyrs to vocal activists.

With the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice and other committed immigrant rights’ advocates, they are fighting to have an ordinance passed that will criminalize wage theft. Theirs is an epic battle to humanize immigrants who have been rendered invisible by a city and a people that have benefited greatly from their noble labor. If we dared to count the dollar losses over five-years, we are talking millions, maybe billions, that have been stolen from men and women who have repaired a once very broken city. New Orleans, its citizens, and the new mayor need to bring the immigrants out of the shadows. Give them the visibility they deserve in the Crescent City.

José Torres-Tama

ArteFuturo Productions

2426 Saint Claude Avenue

New Orleans, LA 70117

www.torrestama.com

504.232.2968

"Make art that matters!"

NEW ORLEANS FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR OGDEN MUSEUM ART BOOK available at http://www.torrestama.com/ogdenbook/index.html